Chapter23IdeologiesandUpheavals,18151850

I.

The Peace Settlements

A. At the Congress of Vienna (1815) Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Austria attempted to
establish a balance of power in Europe
1. Numerous territorial changes were made to maintain equilibrium
a. They dealt with France moderately by accepting her enlarged borders
b. Prussia was given extensive territories in the Rhineland
2. Members of the Quadruple Alliance settled their own differences.
3. Belgium and Holland were unified under a single monarchy
4. The Concert of Europe was formed and operated as a loose forum to achieve
consensus among the major powers on foreign policy questions.
B. Repression of Revolutionary Movements
1. Austria, Russia, and Prussia formed the Holy Alliance in 1815
2. Klemens von Metternich, Austrian foreign minister, organized the
intervention of Austrian and French troops to suppress liberal and
nationalistic revolutions in Spain and Sicily
3. Metternich came to symbolize the conservative reaction to the French
Revolution.
a. As a leader of the Austrian Empire, which included many different nationalities,
Metternich could only fear the rise of nationalism in Europe, which could
dissolve the empire.
b. He issued the Carlsbad Decrees that instituted repressive measures against
liberals and nationalists in the German Confederation

II.

Radical Ideas and Early Socialism

A. Liberalism
1. After 1815, liberalism came to be identified with the class interests of capitalism
2. The demands of liberalism included:
a.
b.
c.
d.

Representative government
Individual freedoms, such as freedom of speech, press, and assembly
No government interference in the economy
Equality before the law

3. The principle of laissez-fair was formulated by Adam Smith

a. His book, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
advocated a system of free trade.

b. Smith was critical of mercantilism and argued that a free economy would bring
about wealth for all, including workers.
c. The laissez-faireists believed that the economy should be left unregulated.
B. Nationalism
1. Modern nationalism had its roots in the French Revolution.
2. Nationalists argued that each people had its own mission and cultural identity
3. Nationalists sought to turn cultural unity into political unity and national independence.
a. Nationalism created the desire to match state boundaries with cultural boundaries.
4. The rise of industrial and urban society required common culture and common
language, leading to standardization of communication in these areas.
a. Nationalists believed that common language and traditions would bring about
unity and common loyalties.
5. Much of traditional national culture was actually invented by nationalists.
6. In the early 1800s nationalism was generally linked to liberal republican ideology.
7. Jules Michelets concept of the concert of nations stated that as all nations became
self-governing, they would cooperate for the betterment of humanity.
8. The very act of defining the nation excluded or even demonized others, setting up a
potentially dangerous we-they dichotomy.
a. Nationalism encouraged the ideas of racial and cultural superiority.
C. Socialism gained force during the 19th century.
1. Socialism was a desire to reorganize society to establish cooperation and a new sense
of community.
2. French Utopian Socialism generally included the ideas of government planning of the
economy (The Jacobin example) because of the disruptive nature of free market
competition, greater economic equality, helping and protecting the poor, and state
regulation (or ownership) of property.
a. Early socialists often drew inspiration from the demands of the sans-culottes in
1793-1794
b. Saint-Simon and Fourier proposed a planned economy and socialist
communities.
c. Joseph Proudhon believed that property was profit stolen from workers.
d. Louis Blanc participated in the provisional government formed in Paris after the
abdication of King Louis Philippe in February 1848.
D. Karl Marx created and additional form of socialism

1. Marx was the last of the classical economists, influenced strongly by David Ricardo
and his iron law of wages.
2. Marxs thinking build on the philosophy of Hegel.
a. Marx used Hegels model of history as a dialectic process of change
i. One set of ideas generates an opposing set of ideas, and the two then
synthesize.
b. But Marx argued that economic ideas, rather than ideas, drove history.
c. Class struggle for economic control formed an integral part of historical
evolution
3. Marx was critical of the French utopian socialists because he believed that their appeals
to the wealthy to help the poor were nave.
4. Karl Marx believed that class warfare was an integral part of historical evolution and
predicted that proletariat (workers) would overthrow capitalists in a violent revolution
a. In their book, The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Friedrich Engels asserted
that capitalism was a necessary stage of economic and social development.
b. In the next stage, a proletarian victory over the capitalists would bring about the
perfect society.
III.

The Romantic Movement

A. Romanticisms Tenets
1. Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress)
2. Characterized by imagination and the rejection of materialism
3. Break with the Enlightenment and classicisms rationality and order in favor of
emotional exuberance
4. Personal fulfillment was the supreme purpose in life.
5. Spontaneity in life and art
6. Nature was portrayed as awesome and tempestuous, while industrialism was an ugly,
brutal attack upon nature and the human personality
7. Germaine de Stals book On Germany urged French artist and writers to embrace
German romanticism.
B. Literature: Wordsworth, Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, and George Sand
1. George Sands novel Llia her own quest for sexual and personal freedom
C. Art and Music: English painters Turner and Constable, composers Franz List and Beethoven
1. Eugene Delacroixs greatest masterpiece, Liberty Leading the People, celebrated
the nobility of popular revolution.

IV.

Reforms and Revolutions

A. Greek War of Independence (1821-1832)
1. Greek nationalists fought for freedom from the Turks of the Ottoman Empire.
2. The Greeks ultimately won the support of Great Britain, France, and Russia and
became independent in 1830.
B. Political and social reform swept Great Britain
1. The British aristocracy feared liberalism
2. In 1815, the Tories passed Corn Laws to protect the big landholding aristocracy from
imports of foreign grain.
3. In face of the resulting protests, the Tories suspended the rights of habeas corpus
and assembly.
a. At the Battle of Peterloo, the government used cavalry charges to break up
working class demonstrations.
4. The most important factor influencing the peaceful mid-century reforms in Great
Britain was political competition between the aristocracy and the middle class.
a. The growth of the middle class and its desire for reform led to the Reform
Bill of 1832, which enfranchised many, more voters.
b. The Reform Bill resulted in the Commons becoming the most important
legislative body over the House of Lords in Parliament.
5. Tories competed for working-class support with the Whigs by passing factory
reform bills.
6. But the Chartist movement for universal male suffrage failed.
7. The Corn Laws were repealed in 1846 and ushered in an era of free trade.
8. In Ireland, dependence on the potato for food, a potato blight, and gross exploitation
of the peasants by absentee Protestant landlords led to famine between 1845 and
1851.
a. The government took little action to save the starving, which would add to
the resentment of the Irish against the English.
C. The Revolution on 1830 in France
1. The act that precipitated the revolution was Charles Xs repudiation of the
Constitutional Charter and his attempt to impose an absolute monarchy.
2. The revolutionary actions of the artisans, shopkeepers, and workers of Paris
succeeded in overthrowing Charles X.

a. Charles Xs cousin, the Citizen-King Louis-Philippe, became the new

constitutional monarch of France.
b. But the winners of the revolution were the notablesthe 100,000
wealthiest males out of a population of 30 million who the right to vote.
D. The Revolutions of 1848
1. Overthrow of Louis Philippe and the establishment of an authoritarian republic in
France under Louis Napoleon in 1848.
a. The revolution resulted from rising grain prices, high unemployment,
government refusal to consider electoral reform, and the closing of the
national workshops
b. The shopkeepers, artisans, unskilled workers, and liberal members of the
working class all contributed to the uprisings success.
c. Failure of national workshops for the poor and bloody suppression of a
working class uprising in the June Days in Paris resulted from middle-class
fears of a socialist revolution
2. In Austria, repression of nationalist rebellions in Hungary and Prague
a. Archduchess Sophie was the person most responsible for suppressing the
revolutions in the Habsburg lands.
3. In Germany, the National Assembly in Frankfurt worked on a liberal national
constitution to create a unified German state.
a. The Prussian Constituent Assembly became distracted by the war with
Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein and their attempt to unify Germany was
ultimately blocked by Prussia and Austria.